Recently, network apparatuses are generally used, and many personal computers (PCs) and printers are connected to networks. In this printing environment, printing methods such as distributed printing and broadcast printing which use a plurality of printers are known. For example, in distributed printing, a print job is divided into predetermined page ranges and printed by a plurality of printers. In broadcast printing, each of a plurality of printers is assigned printing of a predetermined number of copies, and the printing processes by these printers are performed in parallel to obtain a plurality of copies as printing output for a single job.
A plurality of printers used in the printing environment explained above sometimes have different characteristics (setting items). To set these printers having different characteristics, it is necessary to individually set the printers via user interfaces provided by printer drivers corresponding to the printers. A setting method which sets standardized contents for a plurality of printers is also proposed.
Unfortunately, in the above-mentioned conventional setting method which sets standardized contents, many inconveniences occur because conflicts between the characteristics of a plurality of printers (disagreements between settable functions of a plurality of printers) are not taken into consideration.
Additionally, printing setting for a plurality of printer drivers presumably has items which can be set more efficiently when individually set for these printer drivers than when collectively set at once. However, the conventional method does not assume printing setting like this. Furthermore, items to be individually set for a plurality of printer drivers must always be individually set in the conventional method.
The setting user interfaces of a plurality of member printer drivers can also be integrated into a single user interface and displayed in a settable manner. However, this leads to an increase in the setting items and may confuse the users.
As described above, no prior art can provide a setting environment in which a user can efficiently set items as many as possible for each of a plurality of printers. That is, although several methods have been proposed as a method of setting the contents of a plurality of member printer driver UIs by one printer driver UI, no setting method is more efficient than the method of performing setting by using individual member printer driver UIs.